Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) is a format used to store print data for print jobs. According to AFP standards, a print job is divided into AFP objects. Each AFP object may define a part of the print job, such as a document, a page, an image, text, etc. Furthermore, AFP objects may be nested within each other. For example, an AFP document object may include multiple AFP page objects, and each AFP page object may include multiple text and/or graphical objects.
Each AFP print job may be associated with metadata. Metadata is contextual information used to describe the print job. For example, metadata may indicate an author of the print job, may indicate a preferred rasterization algorithm to use while processing the print job, or may indicate any other suitable characteristic of the print job. As presently required according to AFP standards, metadata for an AFP print job is stored within an index as a series of one or more AFP-defined Index Elements (IELs). Each IEL includes Tagged Logical Elements (TLEs) that each contain a single name-value attribute pair.
Name-value pairs may not be an optimal format for each and every form of metadata which a user may wish to add to a print job. Therefore, users continue to desire enhanced flexibility in defining contextual information for a print job.